My fiancé and I are getting married in just over a year, and we have indirectly found out that there is an expectation for us to host extended family members of my fiancé’s family when they visit to attend our wedding. For context, my partner’s maternal family are from South-East Asia, and we would be expected to host five family members (with the remaining four family members staying at my fiancé’s parents house). Flights are yet to be booked, and we still don’t know for sure exactly how long they would be staying.
For further context, me and my partner are currently building our very first house which is expected to be finished in the next few months (so roughly 10 months before we get married), which adds further stress of having to make sure our house is fully furnished and ready for hosting. My fiancé’s family don’t speak the best English, and they will not have access to a car due to us needing them for work (nor will we have the time to be driving people around). My sister-in-law is far better at speaking the language than my fiancé is and she has a car and license, so we thought it would be helpful for her to stay with us (and she is happy to do this). however, my sister-in-law would have just started her university degree and is also in the bridal party and realistically I think it would be a lot of pressure for her to have to manage this. Also, my fiancé’s parents’ house is going to be about a 40-minute car drive from our house, so it’s not like his mum can pop over that regularly.
I feel overwhelmed at the thought of having eight people (this includes us and my sister-in-law) as well as our large dog (his family don’t have experience with dogs and they have a five-year-old child) in our house leading up to the wedding and potentially afterwards. We are not going on our honeymoon until a few months after we get married so after our 2 night hotel stay, we would have to come home as a freshly married couple to a full house of people. After thinking about it and upon discussion with my fiancé, we have decided that we are going to tell his mum that we will not be hosting anybody at our house due to the stress of the wedding and us still working full-time. This is yet to happen, and my fiancé is extremely nervous to have this conversation and he feels as though it is a burden on his parents – which I totally disagree with. I am also extremely annoyed that this is just an expectation, and we haven’t even been asked whether we are okay with it (nor have we been directly told). An arrangement we will be suggesting instead would be to have my fiancé’s sister and brother stay with us instead, freeing up 2 bedrooms in his parents’ house, but this might look offensive, as though we have something against his overseas family. This would also mean that my fiance’s parents would have 9 family members from overseas at their house (excluding my fiancé’s brother and sister). So, am I the asshole for refusing to host my fiance’s family at our house?
NTA. Didnt even read the majority of your post. Weddings are stressful and the last thing you need is having to host guests, family or not, at home while trying to deal with it.
Got married myself in September 2024, I’m Irish, living in Norway and my family stayed in a nearby Air BnB in the lead up to and after the wedding (we all stayed at the venue the night of), there was zero question of them staying at our place, it was stressful enough without that and they didn’t expect it. The wedding is for you, not them.
The best thing you can do is rent them an Airbnb, and have no guests in your home. Hold your ground. What you describe is a nightmare.
NTA
NTA. I come from a similar culture where it is normal to host a large amount of relatives with no questions asked, and I know how hard it used to be on my mom to accommodate this many people. You shouldn’t have to worry about this on top of your wedding preparations and moving into your new house. Also they should have at least asked first, it should not be simply expected from you. Since this is your fiancé’s family he should be able to deal with this without anyone taking it personally or blaming you.
No!!!!!!! Nta just NO
“no”
NTA. You do not have the responsibility to host 5 people while also getting married. Look up the appropriate AirBnB options nearest your MIL’s house if hotels are out of the question and encourage her to select something suitable for the family. You are hosting a wedding, not a reunion, not a summer camp. Your focus is on hosting the wedding.
When we bought our place with next to no help from my inlaws, my MIL tried to turn our guest room into her overflow guest space. We let it go once because we were excited to see those relatives but made it clear it could not happen again. She tried it a second time a year later and my husband shut her down, especially because she tried to pawn off truly unpleasant people we had no relationship with to avoid hosting them herself.
INFO: how much of a financial burden will this travel to attend your wedding be for the family?
NTA. Make your house absolutely not ready on time. Give yourselves perfect cover and necessitate hotels.
NTA. Look into a AirBnB or short term rental that can accommodate them. There’s no way I’d host a bunch of people and deal with a wedding
Rent and air BNB and pretend it’s your house and host them there. You just ” built” the house so there aren’t any photos and some stuff is still in storage because of wedding and the house ran late
They live overseas, they won’t know your actual address and where you live.
This is genuinely hilarious omg 😂
NTA. (Edited to add)
The bride and groom should never host anyone. They have too much to do and need privacy.
NAH – it would be nice if you could host them, but traditionally you would be living with parents before and after, and they would largely manage the hosting right?
Also, its nice to have the hollywood newly-wed moment, but it probably isn’t so important that you structure things around it. Its nice to have a house to yourself immediately, but realistically you’ve been living together for a while already, and probably aren’t doing anything new on the night. If you want these people to come, you probably should expect some disruption and take on a hosting role to some extent.
If you don’t want to have them, don’t – but this is the culture and family is important so don’t just panic and assume the worst the whole time. But you already aren’t doing all the traditional marriage practices so don’t feel tied to anything.